Help, I Need Society to Tell me how to be Happy

Help, I Need Society to Tell me how to be Happy

By: Delani McKee 

What makes an individual happy? It’s a big question. In school, we learn how to do math, write essays and understand science. But, no one ever teaches us what it means to be happy. One could say it means to be content with who you are as a person. Whereas if you were to look up the happiest countries in the world, the data is based off on of how much money they country is making and how large their carbon footprint is, so if we have those things we should be on top of the world right? I don’t think so. It’s true. The society that we live in greatly affects our happiness. Having access to basic human necessities, supportive friends, and home to find peace at could help maintain human joy. In the 1900’s the soldiers needed the same in order to pursue their lives. However, the soldiers were being betrayed by society, were being purely “trained for heroism” (22), which then resulted in their loss of identity and overall self-worth. This novel showcases  how the cultures in the 1900’s glorified war and were inured to the actual horrors that their loved ones saw each day.

One of the most depressing aspects of this novel is the betrayal that the soldiers experience by their own society.  Each day, these men go out into the trenches and witness horrifying things, things that man should never even have to imagine. But for these soldiers, they go into war completely alone and come out of it even more so. Paul Baumer reflects on the idea that “[the soldiers] had fancied [their] task would be different” (22) but were sought out to take part in the war to be nothing but “circus-ponies” (22). This relates to the idea of the men’s society using them for nationalism, almost like they were in the war purely for display.  Then further betraying the soldiers and stripping them of who they were as people.

           When Paul’s society dissembles his identity he does not know what to become.  This has lead to the loss of family connection and Paul no longer feeling as though he belongs in his own home. The men succumb to the idea that “first [they] are soldiers, and afterwards, in some strange and shamefaced fashion are, individual men” (272), yet these men do not know what else to be, they are trained to kill while sometimes eating and sleeping.  It is understandable that it could be hard for a man to find himself, create goals and pursue his life when he knows nothing but a life of war. The quote relates to the idea that due to the men knowing nothing but how to be a soldier, when they come home they feel disoriented and like an outcast. Paul also demonstrates in the novel how society is not capable of hearing about Paul’s traumatic experiences in war, this is why when going home they have no one to relate to or find comfort in. With Paul’s society glorifying war, it makes it hard for people around him to understand what the war has done to him emotionally, further enhancing Paul’s feeling of loneliness causing him to be happy.

Although society withdraws the feeling of betrayal from Paul, it conveyed in the novel that the wars influence on comradeship has made Baumer happy. Much of the struggles that the men face are made at ease due to the “great brotherhood” and “desperate loyalty to on another” (272), demonstrating how the loneliness that the soldiers often feel shy away when they have each other.  Since the men are not able to find comfort in their families, they lean on their friendships to help them get through the war. After being betrayed by society, in order for Paul to survive in the world, he seeks love and confinement in his comrades. Multiple times throughout the book readers are able to see individual happiness when the soldiers are spending time together, enhancing the concept that society is not the only impact happiness of an individual. In spite of the fact that society can affect a beings happiness, the soldiers are able to find peace in the brothership that they build with one another.

It took me several days before I could sit and write this blog post, mostly because the books elaborate nature left me in complete haze on what my interpretation and take away from this novel would be. After much thinking, this book has allowed me to see the importance of having a good support system. Society can have a great impact on who you are, and we are lucky to live in a world that we do not have to experience the same thing Baumer and his comrades did. Much like the society Paul lived in, we are dulled to the concept of war causing for people experiencing these things to feel alone. In the end, war takes away not only a persons happiness, but their identity and future. So who benefits? No one.

Images showing what society sees verses what the soldiers see...

Image thanks to: stigdragholm.wordpress.com

Image thanks to: en.wikipedia.org